“What do you think you’re doin’ boy?”
Ermyn Schwaltzer voice exploded as he walked into the bedroom to find his son Charles near the dresser, his massive hands clenched into lead balls as his face set into its familiar locked jaw expression.
“Nothing,” Charles gasped as he spun to face his father. His eyes ran for the door then dropped to a muddy patch on the stained oriental carpet to his left. The carpet had always reminded him of Wong’s Chinese Parlor in town. He had only been there once, when his father had taken him and his mother to the restaurant for her birthday a few years ago. There had been a scene and they had left in the middle of their meal, but the tablecloths had the same woven design of black and green dragons on a crimson background. After that night at Wong’s, Charles would occasionally go to his parents’ bedroom and watch the dragons in the carpet. If he stared long enough, they would begin to wiggle and squirm on the sickly background.
Ermyn strode across the room stopping within inches of Charles’ face, “What are you hidin’ from me? You hand over what ya got behind your back, boy, or you’ll be seein’ stars before we’re through here.”
Charles’ body tensed as he held the pictures of the naked women behind his back.
“I-I-I ain’t hidin’ nothin’.” His voice shook as his boyish fingers snaked the pictures into the back of his Levi’s, hands flying from behind his back to prove his point.
Ermyn growled at Charles and swatted him on the side of the head. Charles’ hand snapped to the spot in reaction as Ermyn further contemplated what to do with the boy. His body, which had been tight as a bow only moments before, melted, and his shoulders slumped slightly. Charles stood up taller. This was the sign that his father’s wrath was subsiding. Sometimes Ermyn would strike Charles, but his rage always seemed to diminish once the blows were thrown. It was as if he gave up in the middle of the fight, as he had given up on everything he started.
“Well, get outta here. Stupid brat. What are ya doin’ inside during the day anyway? Boy your age should be runnin’ round town with his buddies. Go on. Get!”
Charles stayed a moment longer to study his father. Ermyn remained with his head hung and slightly turned from his son. Charles had Ermyn’s shaggy dark brown hair and melancholy oval eyes. His frame was more delicate than Ermyn’s; yet at the age of twelve he already stood as tall as his father’s shoulders. He shoved his hands deep into his front pockets and walked swiftly from the room.
As he pushed open the side door to go outside, he heard his father’s voice call down the hall, “Where’s your mother? Don’t she stay home days?”
“At the store,” Charles yelled back, turning to sprint down the cracked driveway to his bike at the corner. This was the second lie Charles had told Ermyn that day. The first, about taking the pictures, was to save his skin. Charles didn’t know how his father would react if he knew the photos had been taken. They looked old and Charles had only come across them while looking to bum some of Ermyn’s spare cigarettes.
The second lie was not a conscious one. Charles knew his mother was not at the grocery store, but had a feeling that his father would not be happy with the truth. His mom told him that she had always wanted to take dance lessons from a professional instructor. She went on Tuesdays and Thursdays during the early afternoon and told Charles that it would be better if he didn’t mention it to his father because Ermyn would be upset about the money she was spending. He would feel it was a waste of time. He understood and promised he would never mention it; but when his father had come home early from work and Charles had actually lied about where his mother was, a great unease settle into his heart.
Charles tried to work out the guilt he felt from the lie as he rode his bike through town. He passed decrepit buildings where dress shops once held residence. Charles imagined the coffered ladies popping in and out of the boarded up store fronts, looking at fine clothes, shoes, and jewelry. He imagined his mother as one of these women, giggling impishly with a friend as they gossiped about the latest scandal in town. The odd feeling remained throughout his daydream and seemed to be a part of the picture, his mother as a different woman, maybe married to another man with other children as her own.
Wheeling through the short, dry town, it reminded him of his father, as if it too had given up on being a town and so became a pit stop for trucks and weary travelers from the highway six miles out. He dropped by the local Rx, which used to have a soda fountain, but now housed a freezer with pre-packaged Popsicles and chocolate ice cream bars. A soda machine stood in the corner collecting spiders, its cherry face blinking like a bug zapper. Charles loosened two quarters from his front pocket and bought a drink.
He stepped out into the warm autumn afternoon again, a musky smell superimposing itself over the crispness of fall, like that of a jar where caterpillars are kept too long. Charles rounded the corner of the drugstore and sat against the back lot wall with his bike. He slurped the soda and reached into the back of his jeans for the photos he had snagged from his father’s drawer. Having a chance to study them more closely, he realized they were indeed old pictures. The women appeared to belong to a different era. Each of them had silken hair piled into loose knots on top or the back of her head. The first was shot from behind, with the woman peering from large eyes around her left shoulder. Her naked back and buttocks were a pasty ivory color, creating a stunning effect coupled with her raven black hair. The other two pictures were frontal views, one woman standing and the other lying on her side. Each woman had placed a hand to cover the hair between her thighs while their full breasts hung heavily, exposing dark taut nipples. While the sepia photos did not tell the truth, Charles imagined that both women had light blondish colored hair and rosy complexions.
As Charles absorbed the photos he wondered how the women could appear so calm with their naked bodies on display. There was something artistic about the posing of these women, but they must have known that men would buy the pictures only to ogle and gawk. Men like his father, who would leer at their voluptuous bodies. He wouldn’t see anything artful about them; he would only want to possess them.
Somehow, this thought brought him back to the lie he had told about his mother. He knew there was nothing wrong with dancing lessons and he wanted his mother to have something that would make her feel alive. He imagined his mother as a young woman before she married Ermyn and felt strongly that she had been full of life. Maybe Ermyn had too, but Ermyn gave up so easily that life slipped through the cracked linoleum on their kitchen floor as he stood in this t-shirt and khakis and stared listlessly out the window.
Charles looked into the sky and saw that the sun was retreating behind low lying clouds to the west. He rode home, hoping desperately that his mother had picked up some groceries on her way home from her dance lesson so Ermyn would not suspect his lie. He regularly heard the slow, nightly sobs that she buried into her pillow in the next room; and while there were no signs on her face, arms, or legs, he new that Ermyn beat her in a more terrifying way than he did Charles. Her middle aged face, once bright in pictures, would tense and falter as Ermyn’s harsh remarks bore down on her with sharp intensity. Ermyn beat his mother in her mind; each time he screamed or belittled her, a bit of her drained away.
Charles rounded the corner onto his street. The houses were very much alike; small structures on miniscule lots. Each house was one level with a basement and small storage attic. They were designed to be built quickly in response to the needs of returning veterans in the 1940s. Each was brick with coordinated siding: blue on the first house, white on the second, army green on the third, then back to blue. Charles pulled up to the sixth house, a green one, thinking that it was the best house his family had ever lived in. It sure beat the trailer with no heat, or the cramped hotel room they had lived in prior.
He steered his bike into driveway, but his mother’s car was not home yet. He supposed that was a god sign, that maybe she really had stopped off at the store on her way home. He just prayed that she would home soon, because his father would be expecting his dinner.
Opening the side door gently to avoid the obnoxious creaking sound that always riled his Ermyn, he slipped in noiselessly. The house was silent as he tiptoed through the kitchen and down the hall. His parents’ bedroom door was slightly cracked, and he couldn’t help peering in as he passed. His father lay on the bed sleeping. A slight snore arose from deep within his bulky body as he breathed heavily in and out.
Charles turned and walked soundlessly back to the kitchen. He sat at the table and watched out the front window. The sky had darkened to a blackish-blue before the side door opened silently and his mother floated in like a spirit in feathered shoes. He began to greet her, but she rushed forward with her finger to her lips.
His eyes met hers with a question. Hers asked in reply where Ermyn was. Charles shot a refexive glance to the back of the house where his parents’ bedroom was and returned to meet hers, full of query. She nodded in understanding and turned to drift down the hall toward the room.
He watched as she entered her bedroom. There was no talking, yelling, or screaming. His mother emerged moments later with a light suitcase in one hand, her purse in the other. Her face was ablaze with triumph, but when her eyes focused on Charles in the dusky blue evening light, remorse replaced the joy. She took his face in her slight hands, her gaze attempting to swallow his features so that he felt the need to shake loose from her palms. She was mutating before him, becoming that other woman he had imagined many times. The lines were filling out with an overdue smile. Her shoulders lifted back and she stood taller by inches than she had just moments before. She had dressed in one of her best dresses for this occasion, and he noticed her hair had been set. As she bent forward to kiss his forehead, he breathed in the scent of lilacs and realized she was leaving.
She released him and walked to the front door. Turning, she peered around the house and let her eyes caress each favorite item until they returned to meet his once more. The corners of her mouth turned up and then dropped again as she closed the door behind her.
Charles dropped into a chair unable to move. He watched his mother fly to the waiting car at the street while simultaneously replaying what had just happened over and over again in his mind. His mother had just walked out of his life without a word. The thought ran through his brain but he would not accept it.
He was so wrapped in his amazement that he had not heard his father get up and lumber into the kitchen. Only when Ermyn spoke did Charles awake from his disbelief.
“Is she gone?” Ermyn asked pointedly.
Charles said nothing but nodded slowly. Ermyn sat hard on one of the wooden kitchen chairs, his head dropping, large, knobby hands smearing his face. A deep sigh exploded from his mouth.
“Why?” Charles whispered more to himself than to Ermyn.
“Why? Why he asks!” Ermyn fixed him with his stony brown eyes, “Let me give you a little advice about women, boy. Never, and I mean not if they bewitch you with a thousand pretty promises, never marry an independent woman. It just don’t work. She was wild, your mother, wanted everything in the world. I never even knew if you was mine. But I took you in because she promised to make a home for me, and I suppose in my own way I loved her.”
Charles’ mouth dropped and his mind reeled with this final bit of information. Ermyn looked up from his brooding and stared at him, then dropped his gaze and shook his head.
“Fool kid, don’t even know when she lies to ya. Dancin’ lessons! HA!”
Charles bolted from the kitchen, speeding past Ermyn to the front door where his mother had just exited. He too glanced back, not to remember cherished items but to see a monster chuckling at the kitchen table. Charles slammed the door behind him and ran toward the highway.